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Bitnami Mattermost Team Edition for Microsoft Azure

IMPORTANT: Mattermost requires a valid SSL certificate for some browsers. As Safari does not allow self-signed certificates for websockets connections, real-time communication may not work properly. You may see the following error on your browser console: "WebSocket network error: OSStatus Error -9809: Invalid certificate chain". Try using Google Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer instead. If you are running a production server, it is advisable that you set up a proper SSL certificate. Learn how to configure SSL certificates.

Description

Mattermost empowers organizations through secure, modern communication: open source team messaging and file sharing across web, mobile and PC, archiving, search and unlimited third-party integrations.

First steps with the Bitnami Mattermost Team Edition Stack

Welcome to your new Bitnami application running on Microsoft Azure! Here are a few questions (and answers!) you might need when first starting with your application.

What credentials do I need?

You need two sets of credentials:

The application credentials, consisting of a username and password. These credentials allow you to log in to your new Bitnami application.

The server credentials, consisting of an SSH username and key/password. These credentials allow you to log in to your Microsoft Azure server using an SSH client and execute commands on the server using the command line.

What is the administrator username set for me to log in to the application for the first time?

How do I get my SSH key or password?

What are the default ports?

A port is an endpoint of communication in an operating system that identifies a specific process or a type of service. Bitnami stacks include several services or servers that require a port.

Remember that if you need to open some ports you can follow the instructions given in the FAQ to learn how to open the server ports for remote access.

Port 22 is the default port for SSH connections.

Bitnami opens some ports for the main servers. These are the ports opened by default: 80, 443.

How to start or stop the services?

Each Bitnami stack includes a control script that lets you easily stop, start and restart services. The script is located at /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh. Call it without any service name arguments to start all services:

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh start

Or use it to restart a single service, such as Apache only, by passing the service name as argument:

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh restart apache

Use this script to stop all services:

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh stop

Restart the services by running the script without any arguments:

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh restart

Obtain a list of available services and operations by running the script without any arguments:

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh

How to configure outbound email settings?

Follow these steps:

Log in to Mattermost as an administrator.

Browse to the "System Console".

Navigate to the "Notifications -> Email" menu and set the values for your SMTP server. For example, to configure a Gmail server, use the values below. Remember to replace USERNAME and PASSWORD with your Gmail account username and password.

Enable Email Notifications: true

SMTP Server Username: USERNAME@gmail.com

SMTP Server Password: PASSWORD

SMTP Server: smtp.gmail.com

SMTP Server Port: 587

Connection Security: TLS

Click "Test Connection" to validate the connection. If the connection succeeds, click "Save" to save the changes.

To configure the application to use other third-party SMTP services for outgoing email, such as Hotmail or Amazon SES, refer to the Mattermost official documentation.

To configure the application to use other third-party SMTP services for outgoing email, such as SendGrid or Mandrill, refer to the FAQ.

Troubleshooting Gmail SMTP issues

If you are using Gmail as the outbound email server and you are not able to send email correctly, Google may be blocking sign-in attempts from your apps or devices. Depending on whether or not you use Google Apps, the steps to correct this will differ.

For Google Apps users

If you are a Google Apps user, you will need your administrator to allow users to change the policy for less secure apps. If you are a Google Apps administrator, follow these steps:

Look for the section "Less secure apps" and then click on "Go to settings for less secure apps".

Select "Allow users to manage their access to less secure apps".

For other Google users

If you do not use Google Apps, follow the steps in the following sections, depending on whether 2-step verification has been enabled on the account or not.

If 2-step verification has not been enabled on the account, follow these steps:

Browse to the "Less secure apps" page and log in using the account you are having problems with. This option is typically required by many popular email clients, such as Outlook and Thunderbird, and should not be considered unsafe.

Select the "Turn on" option.

If 2-step verification has been enabled on the account, you have to generate an app password. Follow these steps:

How to create a full backup of Mattermost Team Edition?

Backup

The Bitnami Mattermost Team Edition Stack is self-contained and the simplest option for performing a backup is to copy or compress the Bitnami stack installation directory. To do so in a safe manner, you will need to stop all servers, so this method may not be appropriate if you have people accessing the application continuously.

Follow these steps:

Change to the directory in which you wish to save your backup:

$ cd /your/directory

Stop all servers:

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh stop

Create a compressed file with the stack contents:

$ sudo tar -pczvf application-backup.tar.gz /opt/bitnami

Restart all servers:

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh start

You should now download or transfer the application-backup.tar.gz file to a safe location.

Restore

Follow these steps:

Change to the directory containing your backup:

$ cd /your/directory

Stop all servers:

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh stop

Move the current stack to a different location:

$ sudo mv /opt/bitnami /tmp/bitnami-backup

Uncompress the backup file to the original directoryv

$ sudo tar -pxzvf application-backup.tar.gz -C /

Start all servers:

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh start

If you want to create only a database backup, refer to these instructions for MySQL and PostgreSQL.

How to upgrade Mattermost?

It is strongly recommended to create a backup before starting the update process. If you have important data, create and restore a backup to ensure that everything works properly.

Open the "System Console" and save a change. Doing this will upgrade your config.json schema to the latest version using default values for any new settings added.

How to enable HTTPS support with SSL certificates?

NOTE: The steps below assume that you are using a custom domain name and that you have already configured the custom domain name to point to your cloud server. In the following steps, replace the APPNAME placeholder with the name of your application directory.

Bitnami images come with SSL support already pre-configured and with a dummy certificate in place. Although this dummy certificate is fine for testing and development purposes, you will usually want to use a valid SSL certificate for production use. You can either generate this on your own (explained here) or you can purchase one from a commercial certificate authority.

Once you obtain the certificate and certificate key files, you will need to update your server to use them. Follow these steps to activate SSL support:

Use the table below to identify the correct locations for your certificate and configuration files.

How to create an SSL certificate?

You can create your own SSL certificate with the OpenSSL binary. A certificate request can then be sent to a certificate authority (CA) to get it signed into a certificate, or if you have your own certificate authority, you may sign it yourself, or you can use a self-signed certificate (because you just want a test certificate or because you are setting up your own CA).

NOTE: In the following steps, replace the APPNAME placeholder with the name of your application directory.

How to debug Nginx errors?

The Nginx log file is located at /opt/bitnami/nginx/log/error.log.

If you configured Nginx to use a privileged port (port number < 1024), check that the Nginx server is running as user daemon in the configuration file. This user should also have write privileges to the /opt/bitnami/nginx/log/ directory.

How to modify the allowed limit for uploaded files in the Nginx configuration?

The maximum size for uploaded files is set to 1MB by default in the Nginx configuration. You can add the following option at the end of this file /opt/bitnami/apps/APP_NAME/conf/nginx-app.conf to increase the allowed size for uploads. Replace the APP_NAME placeholder with the correct directory name.

client_max_body_size SIZE;

NOTE: Remember to replace the SIZE placeholder with the value you want to set. For example: client_max_body_size 8m;.

Updating the IP address or hostname

Mattermost Team Edition requires updating the IP address/domain name if the machine IP address/domain name changes. The bnconfig tool also has an option which updates the IP address, called --machine_hostname (use --help to check if that option is available for your application). Note that this tool changes the URL to http://NEW_DOMAIN/mattermost.

NOTE: Be sure that your domain is propagated. Otherwise, this will not work. You can verify the new DNS record by using the Global DNS Propagation Checker and entering your domain name into the search field.

You can also change your hostname by modifying it in your hosts file. Enter the new hostname using your preferred editor.

$ sudo nano /etc/hosts

Add a new line with the IP address and the new hostname. Here's an example. Remember to replace the IP-ADDRESS and DOMAIN placeholders with the correct IP address and domain name.

IP-ADDRESS DOMAIN

How to create a Virtual Network peering?

To connect two instances internally you can enable a Virtual Network (VNet) peering from the Azure Portal. Depending if the instances were launched in the same or in different resource groups, there are two methods for performing a internal connection: sharing a virtual network or enabling a virtual network peering.

How to upload files to the server with SFTP?

Although you can use any SFTP/SCP client to transfer files to your server, the link below explains how to configure FileZilla (Windows, Linux and Mac OS X), WinSCP (Windows) and Cyberduck (Mac OS X). It is required to use your server's private SSH key to configure the SFTP client properly. Choose your preferred application and follow the steps in the link below to connect to the server through SFTP.